Refugee and Asylum seekers come from all around the world and seek sanctuary, in an attempt to escape the traumatic experiences they faced back home. Instead, they are welcomed in the most inhumane, distressing and humiliating manner. The focus group for this report is the Palestinian population of refugees. The 1948 war between Israel and Palestine generated the largest and most vulnerable refugee population of the world (currently 7.1 million) 4. Within this population of refugees, women and children are the most likely to be susceptible to the harsh living conditions. The mortality rates amongst this population of refugees are indicative of the overall health and living conditions.

Aims:

To identify the changes in maternal, infant and child mortality rates over the years in the different refugee settlements and to account for the causes of the rates and their effect. Methods: In a systematic process articles, journals and statistical data are gathered, critically appraised and analysed in a comparative way. The data is used to draw conclusions as to whether there are essential differences. The databases used for the research of articles are Medline and Google Search. The Critically Appraisal Skills Programme is used in order to class the articles as reliable and relevant for usage. Also, to facilitate the study, personal contact with refugees is encountered.

Results:

The study showed that there has been a general decrease in infant and child mortality rates over the years. On the other hand the maternal mortality rates seem to not have clearly defined results, as there seem to be many factors affecting the rates.

Conclusions:

On consideration of the results and the fact that there is an inconsistency of data collection for some areas as the conflict in the Middle-East is ongoing, it can be concluded that the mortality rates depend on a vast amount of causes which often combine. Also the scarce amount of data does not allow for major comparisons to be made. On the whole infant and child mortality rates have decreased as a result of mothers being able to give birth in local hospitals (hence the data is more comparable to the local population and not a result of solely the refugee community). On the other hand maternal rates seem to be inconsistent with time changes as many other factors and causes come into the equation.